Ali's Birthday and Chimney Lessons

Happy Birthday, Ali!!  We're sorry you joined the head cold club, but we are impressed at how little effect it is having on your work ethic.  It's great to have a DIRT vet from 2014 (Amazon) along with us and to learn from you and your experience, both with and after DIRT.  We'll try hard to make this day a happy one!

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We may have a few more vegetarians today than we had yesterday thanks to our goat roast. A few people just couldn't face the reality of goat blood soup or statements like "I have some goat throat stuck in my teeth." We mostly liked the goat kabobs and there were tons of salad greens and other vegetables to help those who had gotten too intimate with the goat to eat it.

No movie tonight, so a few of us stayed up at night to stare at the stars in the sky, especially loving the numerous shooting stars we saw. Our wishes were probably all about the continuing happiness of this community and region.

It's back to work today, this time with a master chimney craftsman. We've learned more than we expected about the intricacies of chimney styles and we have settled on what we think is a great plan. We'll tell you more about it later . . .

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Lunchtime.  No chimney work yet.  We had to finish the floor and help Barnabas add another layer of bricks (two actually) above the lenta.  Barnabas and Ferdinand built the strangest contraption to use as a scaffold that we have seen for quite awhile.  It was dependent on a number of unsecured diagonals that made us sure we would not join them up on top.  They have a homemade ladder that is a bit sketchy too, but we were willing to brave it as long as we were not carrying substantial loads.

Lots of bucket lines, moving bricks and mortar, and lots of effort to salvage the last bits of our original sandpile.  At first we were doing this last job wrong and scraping up too much dirt with the end of the sand.  Our friend Samuel (pronounced like sam-WELL-ee) taught us the moves that would make the difference and we managed to muster quite a bit more sand than we thought was possible.

While we were doing these jobs, the roofer, Remy, was busily building trusses from raw boards.  The DIRT people have done a lot of roofing in a lot of places but we have never seen someone construct trusses (roof supports with very complex angles) from scratch.  It was pretty impressive.  A few of us offered to help, but he didn't take us up on our offers.  We think his instincts were probably good.

As for the chimney, Simon has decided that he wants a second estimate on the chimney strategy, so we need to wait out another professional to see what his (or her?) proposal might be.  We might lose the first one in the meantime, but we expect to be better informed in the process.

One of our teams did an interview with the school cook, Mama Grace, to learn what she was hoping for in the new kitchen.  We mostly learned what she doesn't like about the current kitchen, which is everything. She says it is too dark, too smoky, and too dirty.  We think the new kitchen will bring improvements on all of these issues, but we would love to hear more about what Mama Grace's ideal kitchen would look like. We'll keep trying.

We are also looking into the prices of uniform sweaters for the kids. Some of them have nice new ones, but lots of them have sweaters with holes in their sleeves or whole sleeves torn off.  We think we could provide quite a few replacement sweaters in a range of sizes and let the school decide how to distribute them.

We can tell the work on the site is going to be light this afternoon but we have some jobs to do at camp so we are going to split the group and tackle things on two fronts. We have decisions to make about our jobs for the rest of the week, as there are options at the school and there are some reforestation possibilities that also appeal to us.  We know the days are going to drain away faster than we can imagine, so we need to discuss our alternatives really carefully so that we are as happy as we can be with our decisions.

We've really sunk into our routines here, including getting comfortable with have always having REALLY dirty feet.  We are all somewhat tanned (despite our 50+ spf sunscreen) and it's hard to tell whether the stains on our feet are dirt or tan.  The bottoms of our feet might be the giveaway, as they are all filthy.  Always.  Oh well.

We are also good at waiting together, which is always important on DIRT trips.  There are times when the work just isn't there, so we have to find joy even when we can't reach our usual levels of productivity.  This group has special talents in that direction, even if some of our ways of spending idle time together are kind of stupid.  We don't mind . . .

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We had a great dinner tonight that included mashed potatoes (sooooo luxurious) and more tilapia from Lake Victoria.  We had other vegetables too, and a rhubarb dessert.  And after that dessert, we had ANOTHER dessert: Ali's birthday cake.  The whole crew came out singing and we all joined in to their happy Swahili party song that we now know by heart.  We gave tributes to Ali and inducted her into the Order of the Purple Bike, even though she is an honorary member already due to her prior DIRT trip. (We don't do the purple bike thing every time, but maybe we should . . .)

We inducted another person into the Order of the Purple Bike tonight: Alex.  Alex made a bold move today and went to the top of the "sketchy" (his word) ladder to help the masons.  He has also provided us with his visual genius in daily videos, especially those that use the drone or his amazing GoPro stabilizer.  If you've seen some really amazingly clear footage that blew your mind, there's a high chance that Alex was behind it.  Lots of us talked about how we have enjoyed getting to know Alex here and how great his contributions to our group have been.  Yay, Alex!

 This is a normal DIRTies’ meal in Tanzania—with the meal always starting with a great bowl of soup!

 We were widening the path leading up to the brand new composting toilets.

The nights are surprisingly cold forcing the DIRTies to buy extra blankets in town to survive the night.

 Our wonderful hosts helped the DIRTies celebrate Ali’s Birthday with songs and cake.

On our way to the work site, Mount Kilimanjaro was in clear view.   

 Paul and some of the kids showing off their “dab”; a dance move recently made popular.

 Olivia and Paul receiving some much needed help mixing concrete towards the end of the day. The kids had just gotten out of school for the day and were excited to give a helping hand.

 The school children use this interesting technique to carry water. The buckets are too heavy for one to carry. Teamwork makes the dream work.

 Nate and some of the school boys showing off their muscles.

Aidan helping Ferdinand by handing him tools and mortar so he doesn’t have to constantly get on and off the ladder.    

 Abraham coming to say “Jambo” to the DIRTies before we start our day

 Camille extremely excited seeing a truck full of bricks.

 Matt and Aidan getting bricks off the truck and starting the bucket line

Matt and Anthony patiently waiting for the bricks and sand to arrive